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C A M P U S D TRUMPIE PHOTOS
Opening Convocation: Wilson discusses ethics of genetics research Gene therapy researcher James Wilson, ’77, gave the keynote address for this year’s Opening Convocation Sept. 3. Also celebrated during the day was a major gift to the College library, with the inaugural Marilyn Crandell Schleg Library Lecture given that afternoon. Wilson’s speech focused on the complex scientific and ethical questions surrounding genetic research today. President Peter T. Mitchell (right), and chemistry professor Robert While he was on Armstrong (left) discuss current directions in science education at campus, he also met Albion with James Wilson, ’77, prior to the College’s Opening with the faculty and Convocation Sept. 3. Wilson was the keynote speaker for the event. staff who are now designing the College’s Foundation for Undergraduate Research, a key element of the new College Vision. Wilson is director of the Institute for Human Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and an internationally known researcher on gene therapies that could spell the eventual cure of cystic fibrosis and similar birth defects. He is president of the American Society of Gene Therapy. Following his Albion visit, he flew to Los Angeles to be a featured spokesperson with Jerry Lewis on the annual Labor Day telethon for muscular dystrophy where he discussed a potential cure through gene therapy. Robert Warner, former archivist of the United Also during the ceremony, an honorary States, gave the inaugural Schleg Library doctorate in business management was Lecture Sept. 3. conferred on Arnold Langbo, chairman of the A love for libraries that prompted an Albion College Board of Trustees. Langbo alumna and her father to endow the was recognized for his important contribuStockwell-Mudd Libraries with a College tions to many College projects, including the archivist position and a related lectureship Kellogg Center and the Langbo Trustees’ culminated Sept. 3 in the inaugural address of Professorship. Parent of two Albion graduthe Marilyn Crandell Schleg, ’58, Library ates, he is chairman and CEO of Kellogg Lectureship. With her father, Richard Company in Battle Creek. Crandell, Schleg has also endowed the Two endowed professorships were Marilyn Crandell Schleg Library Archivist awarded for the second time. The A. Merton position. This endowment will support a fullChickering Professorship in Biology went to time archivist position serving the College and Dan Skean, associate professor of biology. West Michigan Methodist Conference The professorship will aid his ongoing research on tropical plants. The Royal G. Hall archives, both of which are housed in the Stockwell-Mudd Libraries. Professorship in History was re-awarded to The Marilyn Crandell Schleg Library Geoffrey Cocks, professor of history, who Lectureship provides for visiting archivists, will continue his research on Nazi Germany, preservationists, curators and other material the Holocaust and the social history of illness.
Turner earns coaching award For the third time in his career, Albion College basketball coach Mike Turner, ’69, has been named Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. This award reflects Turner’s leadership of the 1997-98 team, which had a 20-8 season, a postseason tournament championship and a berth in the 32-team NCAA Division III Tournament.
“I think this is a great honor because it reflects how well our players responded to the challenges of this season,” says Turner of his award. “We really played hard—winning 12 of the 13 games that were decided by six points or less.” Turner joined the College’s basketball staff as an assistant in 1970 and was named head coach in 1974. He enters his 25th season with a 346-236 career record at Albion and the longest career of any active collegiate head coach in Michigan.
Honored at the convocation were Arnold Langbo (third from left), Albion’s board chairman, and faculty members Geoffrey Cocks and Dan Skean (both at far right). Langbo received an honorary doctor of business management degree, and Cocks and Skean were named to endowed professorships. They are pictured with Vice President for Academic Affairs Jeffrey Carrier, convocation speaker James Wilson, ’77, and President Mitchell.
Marilyn Crandell Schleg, ’58, and her father Richard Crandell (both seated) created endowments for a library lectureship and an archivist position at Albion. Also pictured are: (from left) President Mitchell, Edward Schleg, and Mrs. Schleg’s sister and brother-in-law, Marlene and Arthur Francis. They were all on hand for the first Schleg Lecture. historians to lecture on archival and library topics and work with the Albion College community. The inaugural lecture was given by Robert Warner, retired professor and dean of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Michigan. Warner, a former archivist of the United States and head of the Bentley Historical Library, discussed “What is Past is Prologue.”
Schleg is a former medical librarian and holds a master’s degree in microbiology from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Michigan. “I have always worked in libraries,” she explains. “[My father and] I wanted to do something for Albion because Albion did so much for me.”
College named ‘Best Buy’ Albion College is one of only 300 institutions in the nation included in Barrons’ Best Buys in College Education, 5th edition. Institutions are selected, according to the publisher, because they “give students and parents the best value for their education dollar.” The 720-page paperback, released this summer, also includes information on academic programs and campus life, along with comments from current students. In reporting on the academic climate at Albion, the guide quotes a first-year student as saying: “The [faculty’s] ‘open door’ policy is great. At any
time my professors are willing to talk with me about papers, my future, or the noon faculty basketball game.” A senior observes, “The ownership I have taken over my own education is the most beneficial thing that Albion has given me.”